


With History Written Boldly on his Face

by eudaimon



Category: The Hollow Crown RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:04:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michelle loves the quiet moments with Joe - the ones that happen in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With History Written Boldly on his Face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newredshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, darling girl. It was, as ever, a pleasure to write this for you ♥

_Dockery lives in London_. It doesn't even say that anymore, but she sort of liked it when that was all that Wikipedia wrote. 

She likes that that's all that it says - that there was something there but that it also implied that she wasn't interesting enough for anyone to go digging for more. She likes that she has her life on Downton (although she missing Dan bloody _awfully_ ) and then she can go off and do other things, act with other people, and then come back to her own life. That's the beautiful thing about acting, she thinks: none of it has to matter unless you want to.

None of it has to last, unless you make it last.

*

Dockery lives in London. It's a little flat, not much to write home about, but it's in a nice part of town, close to a tube station, down the road from a pub where they sometimes meet for drinks on a night when she hasn't decided to cook dinner. She's going to cook. Joe's coming straight from rehearsals for his new thing, and then they've managed to schedule while Tom _and_ Hayley are in town, so they're both going to come too. Hayley arrives first, Hayley who's always beautiful, even in her plain black dress, tattered at the neckline and the hem. They make idle conversation over a glass of decent wine. Michelle pulls a passable curry together. They wait for the boys.

"How do you cope with it?" she asks, taking a moment to sit down at the table. "With how bloody...astronomical he is now."

Tom. She's talking about Tom.

Hayley shrugs. Her dress slips down off one shoulder.

"I think it'd be worse if he acted like he's noticed," she says. "But he's always just _Tom_. And, as long as that doesn't change…"

Between her and Joe, Michelle's the one with fame to contend with. It's worse in New York and L.A than in London. In London, she can still go and do her shopping; people leave her alone. In the states, it's starting to feel a bit...astronomical (it's Hayley's word, but it's a good one. Apt). They've never been there together, but she imagines that Joe would end up lost in her wake. 

He slips in quietly. Tom's already rung to apologise for being late. Joe lets himself in, disappears into the bedroom for a few minutes and comes back in a fresh t-shirt, smiling. He doesn't know Hayley as well as Michelle does, but his smile is warm. He blushes when he leans across the table to kiss her cheek. Michelle's standing at the stove and Joe steps in beside her, his hand finding the curve of her waist.

"Hullo," he says. Hayley's on the phone and, in that moment of false privacy, Joe just gathers up the fabric of Michelle's dress with his fingertips, just circles the skin over her hip. It's such a small touch, so shy and yet devastatingly intimate. In that touch, there's a promise for later. She knows it - he knows it. When she looks up, he's blushing, just quietly.

"Can I help with anything?" he says.

Michelle shakes her head.

"Get a drink. Sit down. Talk."

He gets them both a beer.  
Eventually, Tom arrives.

*

The apartment is small enough that it feels just right for the two of them - they take up the available space. Joe stands in the kitchen in t-shirt and jeans, barefoot, doing dishes. Michelle sits at the table, with her feet up on one of the spare chairs. She likes it when it's like this - quiet, domestic, when she can see the shape of what they could have if they just let themselves step into it.

It makes her think of Molly Bloom and her _yes, I said yes, I will, Yes_.

He brings this out in her - these parenthetical thoughts that she'd never tell anyone else.

(She loves the word 'parentheses'. It's one of those words that sounds almost onomatopoeic. It's quiet, whispering sound that things make when they happen in the gaps.

Like so. Like this.)

"Leave those," she says, slipping both hands up under his shirt, over his stomach. "Come to bed."  
"You're a mess, woman," he says, but he leaves the last few pots. When he cradles her face to kiss her, his hands are damp and smell faintly of lavender.

*

They end up on the sofa, between shafts of light thrown from the street through the windows. Joe sits and Michelle slides into his lap, tousling the fingers of both hands in his hair. She wasn't lying when she said that he was great, gorgeous, brilliant, but, God, it's more than that. He manages to be both shy and bold, headlong. Sometimes, she catches a flicker of Hotspur in him, but only in the corner of her eye, right before he does something else.

Right before he peels her dress up over her head and drops it on the floor. He kisses her and unhooks her bra one handed, smooth as something from a movie. She loves being naked with him. Loves Sunday mornings in bed and baths and the couple of memorable times that they haven't get any further than the kitchen. She loves the way he looks naked, how he's so shy a lot of the time but utterly comfortable in his own skin. She loves the way he looks at her. She loves the way he is.

"Fuck me, Joe," she murmurs. "Please."  
No Shakespeare. Not this time. Just them, simple and artless as they are.

They go slowly with Michelle in his lap, setting the pace with her rise and fall. Joe kisses her jaw, her neck, the slope of her breasts. She tousles her fingers in his hair to pull him closer. She can only keep the movement slow for so long before she starts to feel more frantic, more desperate for him. She rocks, rising up on her knees until he almost slips out of her before he slides back down. His hands - beautiful, broad, long-fingered hands - slip down to her arse to pull her in tighter.

She comes with his name on her lips, her fingers tight in his hair. Afterwards, she presses kisses along his hair-line by way of apology.

They sleep on the sofa, a blanket pulled up over them, Joe's head pillowed on Michelle's chest.  
She closes her eyes and drifts.

_That'll do,_ she tells the universe. _Yes_.


End file.
